Guild Wars 2

Relatively new to guardian, enjoying it so far, but symbol of swiftness makes me angry! My poor kitten is tired of being tossed against the wall every time I get mad at this ability, so thought I would see if there are any tricks, or if the ability is just there to make you angry.

Obviously it does not stack with itself, well if you stand in it, you can get an extra second or so, but the next time you put it down it will have no effect if you are still effected from the previous one. Does it stack with the quickness from other classes, if so which? Any logical reason why it shouldn’t stack with itself and other forms of swiftness?

Some times it just seems to have no effect at all, I am assuming I am passing through the circle between pulses and thus get missed by the effect. I love when this happens when an angry zombie zerg is attempting to eat me. Is the pulses why it is missing me, any tricks here? I have found if I can cast it right at my feet, then I always get hit by the first instant pulse, its when I cast it right in front of me that I have issues.

Does the damage on this ability get good enough when your damage spec to be worth using for that? Is it worth the fact that you have to micro manage placement, because otherwise some pathing mob is going to put you in combat mode, thus slowing you down, also annoying in the case of angry zombie zergs chasing you?

Any tricks with this ability I am likely missing that might make me less angry when I get caught by the zombie zerg for one of the above noted reasons?

Thanks!

In my experience The symbol of swiftness is only good for getting from A to B and does not have any in-combat merits and nor does it work well for trying to escape from enemies. If you cast it just a little bit in front of you then you’ll get the buff without having to stop and stand in it. Other than that I can’t think of any other tips for making this rather weak skill any better.

Sorry I couldn’t help any further and I have been playing Guardian from day 1 so I’m sure I’m not missing anything.

I’ve used it along with Altruistic Healing, Writ of Exaltation and Writ of the Merciful to be a placed, AoE heal that also heals you when in large groups. Without Writ of Exaltation though, as you said, you can at time walk through it between ticks unfortunately. I would use it for any of the supportive symbol traits, not by itself and probably not with Zeal either as staff is really more of a support weapon.

Using it without any traits is a bit average unfortunately.

It doesn’t stack with other forms of swiftness because of how it had to be implemented. In beta, it worked like all the other symbols where it pulsed a short duration boon, and the longer you stayed in the symbol, the more it stacked. However, that didn’t work too well with Symbol of Swiftness because stopping to stand in it defeats the purpose. So now, each time you activate it, it refreshes its own boon duration that is separate from other swiftness boons.

When you have swiftness already it just resets the last 1s on the swiftness pulse. If you use the symbol first then a shout for swiftness it’ll add them together.

It can be used as an attack as well… I use it vs rams in WvW by placing it on the bottom of door while I pew pew though with the auto attack…

Hate it when some random mob patrols by after I’m down the way and puts me in combat… slowing me down… >:O

the staff is a “utility” weapon with a good basic spam attack.

but agreed;
line of warding is not a good/fun skill the way its done now.
symbol of switfness is just bad aside for travelling. maybe as a larger radius it would find some use as more peeps in melee would be affect by it.
empower should be castable while moving or have a reduced casting time.
sphere is allright, not impressive but allright.
wave attack 1 is godly.

Aberrant.6749:

When you have swiftness already it just resets the last 1s on the swiftness pulse. If you use the symbol first then a shout for swiftness it’ll add them together.

It can be used as an attack as well… I use it vs rams in WvW by placing it on the bottom of door while I pew pew though with the auto attack…

Hate it when some random mob patrols by after I’m down the way and puts me in combat… slowing me down… >:O

Exactly this. If you want to gain the full uptime of the swiftness you need to make sure that you have no swiftness on you when you enter the symbol, otherwise it will just refresh 1 second. Damage wise I find it okay with high damage builds. It’s not going to kill much and the cooldown is too long to use it reliably, but I find that it is better then nothing when you have an enemy you can’t reach.